User blog:Aeee98/One stop guide: How to Build a Team 101 Part 1: Units
Alright, because there are already way too many people asking for team help. I should finally (and yes FINALLY) make a one off guide for everyone to understand how teambuilding actually works. My name is aeee98, the guy that you would have known to hoard over a hundred gems in the 6 star era, only to use them 6 months later to clear most of the newer content. As such, let's begin on our quest on team creation. Who should read this guide? Anyone who is a Summoner, essentially anyone who plays this game. Of course, experienced players will find that most of the points are essentially what is obvious to them, but you may find things that could be refreshing in this. List of Jargon in this Guide BC - Battle Crystals HC - Heart Crystals LS - Leader Skill ES - Extra Skill OTK - One Turn Kill DoT - Damage over Turn (Not time because it only occurs at the end of the turn regardless of how long you think at one turn) HoT - Heal over Turn Basics The bulk of the game is determined by the members in your Squad. A Squad is a team with up to 5 units, one of which will be set as the leader of the squad. Unlike most other games, duplicates of a unit work in this game, although they are usually discouraged. There are many kinds of squads, and you can use a variety of squads to clear various content. A squad is limited not just by the number of units. There is a cost limit that a summoner has. This restricts the set of units you can have early in the game, but as you level up and clear more content, more freedom is provided to you. There will eventually be a stage where you have enough cost for a full set of 7-star units. I am going to skip how a unit works because you should already know this before thinking about squads. So, what makes a good squad and what doesn't? A squad should always have a goal. Be it for questing, Trials, Grand Quests, Raids, Arena, each squad is slightly different. It gets slightly more complex with specific elements (each with their weaknesses and strengths), but that isn't that difficult to counter. After a goal is decided, there should be a plan on what it should contain. The units of the squad must be able to work together to meeting its goal, based on its limitations and the buffs that it provides. When doing so, take some time off the usual questing to just look through your units. Write down the list of units that you have and the skills that they have if you need to. Writing is a good way to clear out thoughts and sets you on a straight path to team creation. After the team is created, always go out there to try. Before the Training Dummies arrive in Global, you can try your BC fill, damage etc on a quest of a specific difficulty. Make sure the conditions get as close as what you want. (Eg. if you want to test for BC/HC fill on a single mob, don't test the battles on a round with many mobs. For trials, just be a daring summoner and use the 50 energy, for it is an experience not only for the squad, but understanding the mechanics of the trial better. With that being said I will go through the types of units and squads that could be considered in a squad. Unit Roles Nope I am not talking about the 5 basic types (Anima, Breaker, Guardian, Lord and Oracle). I am basically meaning the roles that a unit fufills in a squad. Each unit has a unique niche, and is usually defined by their stats as well as their skills. For most laymen, the skills is the defining factor in which fits the role. Remember, that Stats do play a part in the final damage and survivability of the unit(s). I will list down the common unit roles that a unit can have. Spark Blanket ''' is basically a unit that can provide lots of hits for your team to spark. They do not need to have a Spark buff itself, like Elza , but that is good to have. Most important things a Spark Blanket has is a consistent attack animation and a large number of hits. '''Crit Buffer '''is a unit that can provide Critical Rate and/or Damage to the team. These units are usually nukers themselves. Critical Damage is good for OTK or Burst teams that focus on killing as fast as possible. '''Mitigators '''are units that can provide Reduced Damage buffs for the team. They can also provide various buffs on top of reduced damage, but their primary goal is to provide the much needed 50% mitigation buff on BB and SBB. Borgeus IS NOT a Mitigator. '''Burst Healers '''are essentially any unit that can heal up the team on its cast. '''Status Negators/Cleansers '''are units that can cleanse and negate status aliments. These units are important if the bosses inflict tons of status aliments, causing your entire team to function improperly. '''Status Inflictors '''are units that inflicts the statuses on the enemies. It doesn't have to inflict all kinds of status such as Kafka, but can have 1-2 skills at a massive rate (eg. Falma). '''Stat Buffers '''are units that provide bonus stats to the users. They are usually devided to the stat that they buff. Stat buffing, especially any skill that increases your ATK are very beneficial in the team's performance as they directly boost the entire skill damage the team has. '''Damage Buffers '''are any unit that increases your damage outside of your main ATK stat. This is not to be confused with the ATK stat buffer even though most summoners mix the two. These units boost '''BB Atk, Elemental Weakness Damage and Spark Damage '''(and now '''Spark Vulnerability). Crit Buffers '''tend to fall into this category too but because of its RNG I seperated the two. '''Elemental Attack Buffers '''are units that adds elements to the unit's attack. This allows units to be able to hit with elemental advantage even without being of a specific element. These bonus elements does not stack with elemental weakness damage. '''Attack Count Buffers '''are niche units that increase Attack Count. While low in numbers, these are usually only seen in Arena teams or occasionally Frontier Hunter teams. '''Defence Ignore '''units essentially enables the team to do true damage to the enemy. Regardless of how high the enemy's defence is, it is regarded as 0 during battle calculation. '''BB gauge generators '''essentially helps with speeding up the recharge rate of your BB gauge. There are various buffs that achieve this goal, such as BB fill on attacked, BC rate increased, BC fill rate increase, Raw BB gain, and the like. '''HoT buffers are units that heal extra hp at the end of the turn. This is usually to counter damages that occur at the end of the turn after the BC and HCs are moved into the characters. Do note that a unit can fall in one or more categories. Overwhelmed already? Well that is just to get MORE jargon out of the way! Now we are looking at how to actually form a team. Normal Questing If you have just started out, any unit works fine. Heck you can throw 3*s in and they will still arguably rekt the entirety of mistral to st. lamia. As the game progresses, quests get longer and more complex, as such you may need more than 1 quest team to fit your needs. My general guideline for quest squads are: At least 1 unit that can Status Cleanse/Negate. This is to counter any unit that can curse or paralyze.on round 1. At least 1 unit that can provide a BB fill buff or a BC drop rate increase. If the story is still easy enough only a leader with a LS of BB generation is required. Enough Damage units in order to one shot as many quests as possible. Use the minimum for a OTK if you want to optimise clear times. My recommended team setup for a "harder" quest squad: MItigator At least 2 of the following (1 of each role): Atk Buffer, Crit Buffer, BC generation Status Cleanse + Healer 2-in-one Spark or BC generating Leader/Friend depending on whichever you need Arena Arena is very easy: pick up 5 strong hitting units, place decent spheres in them, and win, If you are just starting out, aim for the entire team to be able to BB on turn 2. This is assuming you turned the Random Effects off, which for beginners you should. This is usually done by a BC buffer or high hitcount. Once you can easily fill your BB gauge without even thinking, focus towards dealing damage. Setting the Random Effects button increases the number of points, but may cause you to enter a match unfavourable to you. Raid A default raid team should be able to undertake at 95% of all raids with at most 1-2 unit swaps. Here is the recommended lineup: A Mitigator (RC 3 onwards is mandatory) Damage Buffers Status Inflictors (All raids except for raids with complete invulnerability to status) Status Cleansers Healers (Only on single target raids) HoT buffer (against RC6 and some of RC-X missions) Critical Buffer (if you are focusing on speeding the process) HC buffer is recommended if HC healing is not enough. Trials Trials are meant to be a hard process where you go through numerous challenges in a single unit. Most Trial pages on the wiki have a recommended set of leaders and units, but they usually follow a certain guideline 1) Must be able to handle fixed HP damage after mitigation. 2) Must be able to regain buffs fast after a buff wipe with minimal use of consumables. 3) Sustainable Damage 4) Sustainable BB fill through BCs and other BB generators 5) May require BB fill without attacking. Why x unit over y? Some people may ask: why are some units more suited than others for certain content. You may have read guides off the net, or video playthroughs. This is a list of points anybody should think about. 'Elemental Weakness - '''Probably the easiest factor over two units with similar uses in a team. A unit who has an element that is stronger than the target enemy (Eg a Fire unit vs an Earth enemy), will naturally do much more damage than usual, and will take much less damage from the enemy. While there are way too many cases where bosses change elements for their attack, the Elemental Weakness damage can be further amplified by a buff catered to this bonus. '''Buff Coverage '- I have probably covered this earlier, but I can't stress enough that overwriting buffs is a bad thing. Overwriting one buff (even a portion of a buff) usually means you end up losing one buff you could have on another niche, which overall drops your DPS and/or survivability. The only time where you are sure that you can overlap buffs is when you really want a double unit leader skill squad (in which case the Leader Skills actually stack), or if the units have horrible BB management (then you probably need to rethink your squad regardless). '''Boss resistances - '''Each boss has a unique set of resistances. Most do not have many resistances, but there are some notes to think about. If the boss disables HC drops or drops HC efficiency, you would want to use a burst healer or a Heal-over-Time unit rather than all DPS units with a HC buffer. If a boss has BC resistance, you want units that provide BB gauge fill over time or BB gauge fill on attack. Being invulnerable to crit damage means that you just don't waste a slot on a crit damage/rate buffer. More to be added later. Category:Blog posts